Seven years after finishing bottom of the Premier League under David Moyes, Sunderland will certainly dispute the notion that relegation can act as a force for good.
Flash forward to 2024, the closest the Black Cats have come to gracing the top-flight again was a dalliance with the Championship play-offs 15 months ago.
And while Regis Le Bris has those on Wearside dreaming of escaping their EFL shackles after so long away from the big time – the manager believes Sunderland may need 90 points for Premier League promotion with 30 on the board already – a gruelling season is only a quarter of the way complete.
But if Sunderland’s modern-day malaise is proof of the damage relegation can do, football is full of players, coaches and clubs who have bounced back from such adversity; using the sting of those tears as motivation driving them to greater heights.
Hull City joined Moyes’ Sunderland in the Premier League’s bottom three in 2017.
Former Tigers boss Marco Silva put the lessons he learned in that testing camoaign to very good use, now an established top-flight boss with Fulham. Harry Maguire has captained both England and Manchester United.
And Andy Robertson, a Champions League and Premier League winner who Moyes once tried to sign for Sunderland, is perhaps the prime example of how relegation can turn into a mere bump in the road rather than a career-destroying crash.
David Moyes explains why Sunderland did not sign Andy Robertson
“Andy Robertson left Scotland – Queen’s Park – to go to Hull City,” Moyes recalls. “I actually thought I’d done a deal to get him to come to Sunderland.”
Robertson was arguably Hull’s stand-out performer during a season in which they finished 18th in the table.
By the time Moyes came calling – presumably in the January of that 2016/17 campaign – Sunderland and Hull were too closely intertwined near the bottom for The Tigers to ever consider selling to a direct rival.
“I was the manager at Sunderland at the time, and I met his agents and tried to sort out a deal to get him to come from Hull to Sunderland. But, at that time, Hull and Sunderland were both near the bottom of the league and in competition, so we didn’t get him.
“But there’s a million hard luck stories in football.”
Robertson became a Champions League winner at Liverpool
Robertson, of course, would eventually join Liverpool instead for £8 million in the very same year that Sunderland missed out.
A fee which, in hindsight, surely deserves a mention in any discussion about the best bargain buys in recent Premier League history.
Because, while Sunderland and Hull have spent the best part of a decade bouncing around the second and third tiers, Robertson has racked up over 300 appearances and eight trophies in Liverpool red; conquering both English football and the entire continent along the way.
As far as Regis Le Bris is concerned, however, the failures in Sunderland’s past should not be an obstacle to their ambitions of future success.
The Black Cats needed Simon Moore to secure a draw at Preston North End on Wednesday night. But, while obtaining a ninth clean sheet, they also extended their unbeaten run to seven games while keeping a two-point buffer in top spot.